When Salvador Guillermo’s wife was expecting the couple’s first child, he requested paid family leave so he could spend time helping out at home and bonding with his son.

The 38-year-old Los Angeles resident was an independent contractor at Keck Medical Center working as a phlebotomist drawing blood from patients.

“We were short staffed at the time and they didn’t want me to take any time off, but I went through HR and they said I had the ability to take paid family leave,” he said.

It didn’t go as planned. Guillermo was just a week into his time off when he received a call saying he needed to return to work. If he didn’t, he was told he would likely lose his job.

Salvador Guillermo, 38, of Los Angeles is shown here with his wife Rosario and their son Joaquin, 2. Guillermo had difficulty accessing paid family leave after his son was born.

“The agency I worked for subcontracted with another company that paid for family leave,” he said. “That company said that since there were no complications with the birth they couldn’t justify having me off any longer.”

His agency ultimately allowed him to take time off. But it came in bits and pieces — a day at a time, or a few hours out of a working day — and that wasn’t working.

“I quit and ended up out of work for a year and a half,” Guillermo said. “Then my wife went back to work, and I decided to stay home for a year and a half with the baby.”

Guillermo is not alone.

He’s among hundreds of thousands of independent contractors, public sector employees, low-wage workers and others in the gig economy who are excluded from California’s paid family leave program, according to a report released Thursday, Sept. 20.

“Left Behind: How California’s Paid Family Leave Program is Failing People in Low-Wage Jobs and the Gig Economy” was compiled by PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States, a nonprofit advocacy group that hopes to level the playing field. The state’s paid family leave program is intended to give family members time to bond with a new child or care for a seriously ill family member.

Independent and left out

Those who work on a contract basis doing work such as driving buses, cleaning restrooms or drawing blood at a medical facility have no employer-provided paid leave and may not even be covered by the state’s program.

PL+US reviewed data tied to the DIEC program and found only 32 independent contractors were able to access family leave in 2017 — a fraction of the 245,387 workers who accessed leave through the state’s paid family leave program last year.

Public sector excluded, too

The report notes that most public sector workers don’t pay into the State Disability Insurance Program, meaning they aren’t eligible for paid family leave. That group includes more than 500,000 public school teachers and employees, federal employees and some county and state workers.

Public sector employees who participate in the program typically do so through payroll tax deductions,although others may choose to go through private insurers.

Other public employees can get the time off — but it comes at a price.

A teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District who gives birth to a child, or a district-employed father whose wife gives birth can receive 12 weeks off. But that consists of first exhausting all available vacation and sick days, then being paid partially for the remainder of days.

District employees who need to care for a sick family member aren’t entitled to any paid family leave, the report said.

The gold standard?

Some companies have gone further to provide family leave, including Netflix, which provides an entire year of paid time off for salaried employees who give birth and for salaried fathers whose wives give birth. The company provides no paid family leave for employees who need to care for an ill family member, however.

Facebook offers four months of paid leave for new parents, moms and dads alike.

And new parents who work as drivers for Uber, Lyft and Amazon can receive 12 weeks of partially paid family leave, although they must pay into the State Disability Insurance program to be eligible. Drivers whose wives give birth can also receive six weeks of partial pay and they’re required to pay into a system as well.

Low wage earners

The survey found that nearly a third of Californians were eligible for paid family leave but didn’t apply because they said the pay would be too low. Fathers in low-income families are the least likely to take leave, the report said, because it would reduce the family’s income too dramatically.

State Disability Insurance for family leave pays 55 percent of a typical claimant’s paycheck; the other 45 percent can be supplemented with available vacation pay. That deters many workers, including higher paid employees, from taking it, as they can’t afford the pay cut.

California law was recently updated to provide up to 70 percent wage replacement for the lowest-income earners. But since their pay is so low to begin with, that’s not enough for families living paycheck to paycheck.

An updated model

PL+US says California should work towards an updated model that includes:

100 percent wage replacement for low-income families

Job protection so more working people have assurance their jobs won’t disappear after taking paid family leave

An extended length of time for people who need to provide care and bonding

Ensuring access for people working in non-traditional jobs in the growing gig economy

Under a new law passed in 2017, an estimated 2.7 million California mothers and fathers gained the right to 12 weeks of job-protected leave to bond with their newborns. But that legislation only targets 16 percent of the state’s labor force — those who work for employers with 20 to 49 workers.

Annie Sartor, a PL-US program director, said more needs to be done.

“What we found when we dug into the data is that even with the most progressive wage replacement it’s still not enough for lower-income Californians,” Sartor said. “We want this to work for everyone, including the people who are most vulnerable.”

Kevin Smith handles business news and editing for the Southern California News Group, which includes 11 newspapers, websites and social media channels. He covers everything from employment, technology and housing to retail, corporate mergers and business-based apps. Kevin often writes stories that highlight the local impact of trends occurring nationwide. And the focus is always to shed light on why those issues matter to readers in Southern California.